Health care reads for Sept. 16, 2013

In Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, Peter Frost reports that Illinois is way behind other states in getting the word out about buying insurance under the Affordable Care Act:

At the Minnesota State Fair last month, state employees handed out thousands of paperboard fans bearing pictures of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox to promote Minnesota’s health insurance marketplace.

Over Connecticut beaches this summer, airplanes flew banners emblazoned with “Get Covered!” as teams below distributed free sunscreen packets as part of the state’s campaign to get more of its residents insured under the Affordable Care Act.

In Colorado, Oregon and a handful of other states, radio and TV spots have been running for weeks encouraging the uninsured to seek health coverage starting Oct. 1.

And in New York magazine, Jonathan Chait attempts to explain — at length — why Obamacare “continues to drive many Republicans to madness.” He begins:

The Republican party has voted unanimously against establishing the Affordable Care Act in the Senate and then in the House of Representatives, then voted some 40 times to repeal or cripple it; it has mounted a nearly successful campaign to nullify it through the courts and a failed presidential campaign that promised to repeal it; and it has used its control of state governments to block the law’s implementation across vast swaths of the country, at enormous economic cost to those states. Yet somehow, in the wake of all this, the party is consumed with the question Have we done enough to stop Obamacare?